Kevin Zhao
Principal Software Engineer Manager at Microsoft
Minhang District, Shanghai, China
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKevin Zhao is a Principal Software Engineering Manager with 10+ years building cloud services and distributed systems, currently leading the Office AI Suzhou organization to deliver customer-facing experiences and core platform capabilities for Microsoft 365 and Copilot. He has a proven track record of taking products from 0 to GA—most notably driving Azure Spring Cloud and Azure SignalR data plane design and scaling teams from early prototypes to enterprise-grade releases. Kevin blends hands-on engineering (contributions to high-profile open-source projects like the Azure CLI and Azure Maven plugins) with strategic leadership, ensuring engineering excellence, security, and operational reliability. He has led cross-regional teams at AWS and Microsoft, focusing on dataplane reliability for large-scale distributed workloads such as Amazon EMR. Known for cultivating diverse, high-performing teams, he also brings practical integration experience with partner ecosystems (VMware/Tanzu) that accelerated product readiness. Based in Shanghai with a joint Bachelor/Master from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, he pairs deep technical ownership with business-oriented product delivery.
10 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor & Master degree, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bachelor & Master degree, Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Github Skills (24)
dependency-management10
hub10
javascript10
python10
command-line-interface10
microsoft-azure10
java10
azure-iothub10
azure-cli10
javas10
iot10
azure-signalr10
command-line10
maven10
azure10
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
aspnet/AzureSignalR-samples
Mar 2018 - Sep 2018
Code samples for Azure SignalR
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:8 commits, 13 PRs, 13 pushes in 6 months
Contributions summary:Kevin primarily updated dependencies and configurations across several sample projects within the Azure SignalR samples repository. They updated the SignalR JavaScript client and dependencies in ChatRoom, and they also updated other project files, including the .NET SDK and service SDK versions. The user also implemented login via GitHub for the ChatRoom example and modified the UI to reflect login status.
signalrsignalr-coreazuresignalr-clientazure-signalr
microsoft/azure-maven-plugins
Jul 2017 - Nov 2017
Maven plugins for Azure
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:14 releases, 47 commits, 100 PRs in 3 months
Contributions summary:Kevin primarily focused on refining the deployment process for Azure Web Apps using Maven plugins. Their work involved modifying the `DeployMojo` class, adding exception handling, and implementing the logic for deploying containerized applications. They also updated related test files to accommodate the changes and ensure proper functionality. Further contributions included supporting Web App on Windows and FTP deployment by adding FTP uploading functionality.
maven-pluginmaven-pluginsmavenazure-functionsazure-webapp
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